It is well known that, in an internal combustion engine, it is necessary to mix air with the fuel and to place the mixture into a cylinder for combustion. There are numerous forms of carburetor in which liquid fuel is sprayed into a draft of air to achieve the desired mixing. It is also known to utilize the heat from the exhaust manifold to heat the incoming fuel in an effort to make the fuel vaporize more readily. While the simple heating of the fuel line may improve vaporization somewhat, such a technique has never been totally successful in achieving the desired degree of vaporization of the fuel before the fuel is placed into the engine.
In the past, there have been a number of devices utilizing a plurality of baffles to break up the droplets of fuel by mechanical means; and, such apparatus has also sometimes utilized heated baffles so that the heat will assist in breaking down and/or vaporizing the fuel. In the modern gasoline engines, it will be understood that very little increase in efficiency can be obtained simply by a mechanical breaking up of liquid droplets. Additional turbulence and the like similarly achieve very little increase in efficiency. The prior art devices wherein the fuel-air mixture is passed through and among heated baffles or the like have been designed for use with extremely heavy fuels, and such devices have not been made operable on a modern engine. Since an internal combustion engine is essentially a heat engine, the engine is operating on the difference of temperature. As a result, if the incoming air is heated, the efficiency of the engine is tremendously reduced. These prior art devices have been so designed that the incoming air would be substantially heated, but the heat was tolerable because the fuel was otherwise unusable. Thus, the prior art does not disclose any means for improving the vaporization and intimate mixing of fuel and air as received from a substantially conventional carburetor means to achieve improved fuel economy.